Page 77 of The Hockey Grump Saves Christmas

Look at her open and honest expression.

She takes a breath and her shoulders drop a little. Is that a sign that she’s accepted my truth?

“It’s all still affecting you though, right?” she says. “The lying woman, the falling out with Wyatt.”

Man, this woman sees me.

I’m not as good with words as she is. So I just take hold of her pig ears and straighten them.

She lets me.

“There’s more though,” I admit. For her to understand the Wyatt thing, she needs the full picture of what I was going through.

“A few weeks after those stories came out, right at the start of the season, I found out my agent had fleeced me for a bunch of money.”

Her face takes on a pained expression, and she shakes her head in disbelief at the bad luck.

My muscles start to release. Not completely. But these tiny signs that she might trust me enough to believe me allows them to slacken. “Turned out he’d been taking a bigger cut of my pay than he should have. And on one big sponsorship he’d screwed me over completely.”

“Jesus.” She rests a caring hand on my injured shoulder.

“I’d worked with him since I first started, when I felt lucky any agent would take me on. And I never checked the numbers. Just trusted him.”

“Right.” Her expression shifts to that of someone who’s just figured out the solution to a tricky math problem. “So you don’t trust anyone. No women. No businesspeople. And isolate yourself because if you get close to no one, no onecan betray you.”

She’s not wrong.

“Aunt Lou would have a field day with this,” she adds with a gentle laugh.

“Yeah, but she’d also get that I’m not just an asshole for shits and giggles. I have reasons.”

The donkey takes a right turn and the sleigh swings out a bit on the slick road. Natalie clutches my thigh to steady herself.

“That’s a lot to deal with all at once. No wonder you were stressed and upset.” She lets go of my leg, as if she’d only grabbed it by accident. “But what does that have to do with you and Wyatt?”

And here’s the part she might really hate me for.

“I let all that shit get to me. And he kept telling me it was affecting my game, that I was ruining my second Apollos season. That I wasn’t his magic partner anymore. And that just riled me up even more.”

“He can be a bit persistent like that,” Natalie says.

“Yeah, guess I kinda bottled it all up, and, well…” I have to trust she won’t judge me here. “One day Wyatt just wouldn’t shut up about it. And I slammed him against the lockers.”

Her body stiffens against my side.

Am I about to blow it? But I have no choice. If I don’t tell her, Wyatt will. And it would sound way worse coming from him.

“Two of the guys had to pull me off him.” My guts twist with shame. I am not worthy of having this beautiful, trusting woman sitting next to me. “The least proud moment of my life. Throwing my weight around on the ice is one thing. Getting physical with a teammate and best friend is another.”

She leans forward, elbows on her knees, and cold airtakes her place next to me. My stomach clenches. Me basically assaulting a member of her family might be the thing she won’t be able to forgive. But what’s the point of any of this if I can’t be honest with her?

She looks at me over her shoulder. “Is that why he left the team?”

“No. Unrelated. The offer just happened to come at the end of that season.”

“And you haven’t spoken since? Not till he showed up earlier?”

I shake my head. “Well, we were still playing together, so there were times when we had no choice. But we only talked when it was absolutely unavoidable. Then at the end of that season he moved to the Ironmen and, no, we haven’t spoken since then.”

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